My Theory on Time Travel

If time travel were ever going to become available in the future, it would also be available now and yesterday. Why? Because even if the secrets of time travel are unlocked 1000 years from now, the technology, like all technology, would eventually become cheap enough to mass-market. Everyone would have his or her own personal time-travel device, the same way everyone now has a computer.

With average joes and janes traveling back and forth through time as easily as we go to Disney World or even the supermarket, and with money to be made by big companies from selling time machines to people of every preceding generation, time would not exist as we know it. Time would be like a highway, where you can get on and off at any exit. We wouldn't think of time as linear, but rather as no more than a location. "My friend Bob lives in the 17th century," you might say.

The fact that time is linear is proof that time travel will never be available to us. But if there are theories about how to do it, doesn't it make sense that, given enough time (500, 1000, 5000 years even), time travel should become possible? That it's never invented is proof that humankind simply isn't going to be around long enough to invent it.

Thus humanity will end.

In summary, since time travel doesn't exist now, it will never exist, which means we aren't around long enough to discover it.

Discuss.

Jane the T-Rex Arrives at my Door

The Illinois posters mentioned in the early days of this blog are finally arriving. Maggie's came last week. Mine came today. It took four months, but here they are.

I had a very clear image of what I thought the posters would look like. I pictured a 12x18-ish sheet of wrapping paper-stock, or newsprint, with a Lexmark printer picture of a 400-pound butter cow. They're free, after all, and what can you get for free nowadays, anyway?

Apparently, a lot. At least in Illinois.

The posters are regular poster size, a good 24x36, and the paper is thick thick, the likes of which you'd find bearing a print of Matisse or Monet. The ink job is rich, the colors bold enough to make T-Rex Jane an instant centerpiece in any living room.

Illinois's tourism bureau has their act together. Four months was certainly worth the wait.

Calvin

This isn't a real Calvin & Hobbes strip but I thought it was good/depressing anyway. I'm afraid art/imagination is being medicated out of kids. Isn't there something to be said for being crazy? I guess it's easy for someone who has no trouble getting through his day to lament the lack of romance in sanity. I wonder what people would choose for themselves? If VanGogh had been on Paxil, he wouldn't have cut off his ear. He also wouldn't have painted. Hemingway wouldn't have shot himself, but he also wouldn't have written. Every Stephen King fan knows his books went downhill when he stopped drinking.

I don't know if that's okay. For individuals, maybe it's good, maybe stability is good. But for a society where soon the best art will be Volkswagen commercials, I think it's going to suck.

Bushisms

Because they never get old.

"I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them when I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president." —Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 1, 2006

"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself--not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch." —After visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006

"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." —Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005, on the reception of American forces in Iraq

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." —Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

And finally...

"Because the--all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those--changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be--or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the--like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate--the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those--if that growth is affected, it will help on the red." —Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

God Bless Laughter

I'm taking a moment to be thankful for comedy.

The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Onion. (Colbert gets a mention because of the unbelievable that-takes-balls speech he gave with Bush sitting right behind him.)

Thank you for taking issues that make me so mad I could cry and turning them into something I can laugh about: Clever turns of phrase or a perfectly acted fake arguement that simultaneously make me feel better, while mocking others.

For example, this week, The Onion has a great story on a new abortion alternative: a pill to kill the mom, not the fetus.

If I couldn't laugh about these things, enjoying the temporary relief from my outrage, my life would feel far gloomier.

Dep't of Burning Vagrants Alive

Ben: Chris and I went to Rock Bottom last night, and that stretch along Stuart Street there has completely gone to shit. We were accosted by three different people. The, "hey man, what's up buddy?" type shit where you don't know whether they're going to randomly stab you. Fucking broken-down people-wrecks, shuffling along and practically falling over, tipsy and unpredictable. No teeth and cockeyed.

Josh: Yippie.

Ben: When I'm mayor I'm going to start up a Department of Burning Vagrants Alive.

Josh: You are such a brighteyed liberal, Ben.

Kids Today

What is the world coming to? Ten 6 to 8 years old boys sexually assaulted an 8 year old girl on the playground. The article says the boys will be charged with misdemeanors - how can you charge 8 year olds with anything? They should be in mandatory pyschotherapy and counseling, and their family lives should be closely looked into. 8 year olds! I'm disgusted but also really confused.

Little Black Speck

Last night after brushing my teeth I spied in one of my rear molars a gigantic cavity the size of the ball in a ball-point pen. I started to panic. It hadn't been there the day before. Could cavities grow that fast? I have had no cavitities at all, and to suddenly have one this big! It didn't hurt. I pictured them having to remove the tooth. I pictured root canals and falsies, bridges, wooden teeth like George Washington. I began to pace and then to pick and gouge. Five minutes later the cavity became a piece of coffee bean from the espresso icecream I'd been eating earlier, wedged into the grooves. When it was finally on my fingertip and not on my tooth it was the most beautiful speck of black I'd ever seen.

DaVinci Code

OK, yes, I'm finally reading because I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. And it didn't take me long to figure it out -- this is obviously a page-turner. What's more of a mystery to me, though, is why this book has been so popular among Christians since (at least to the point where I am in the book) it basically debunks Christianity.

It's been a long time since I've felt in any way Christian, but it stung me when we learn that Jesus's divinity was something that Roman emperor Constantine came up with hundreds of years after the fact... and was put to a vote by politicians seeking to create a religion that could subdue a rowdy population. Ouch. Is that true, I wonder (and if so, is it just ignored?), or is it merely a theory/myth the author is treating as fact in his story?

It weirds me out that we can never really know what happened in the past, and that real-life history can in fact be ret-conned just as easily as a silly comic book can.